Sun Compass for iPad, iPod Touch and iPhone
Description of App
This app can be used as a compass app for the iPad 3G+WiFi, which does not come with a default app that makes use of its built-in compass. In addition, this compass app lets you determine your direction by calculating the current sun position, and will announce this bearing. To do so it needs to know your location, which is looked up by different ways, depending on whether you have an iPod Touch, iPhone 2G/3G/3GS/4 or iPad.
iPod Touch:
1. your timezone region.
2. wifi triangulation.
Additional for iPhone 2G:
3. the cell postion
Additional for iPhone 3G, 3GS, 4G and iPad:
4. your GPS position
If the sun is visible, you can use its direction as another way to get your bearing when walking or hiking.
If you have an iPad 3G+WiF, iPhone 3GS, or iPhone 4, then you have an additional button at the right, which turns the built-in compass part of the app on or off, toggling between the regular compass and the Sun compass functions. (As with the iPhone, the regular compass setting allows you to read bearings referenced to either true north or magnetic north.)
The Sun compass function is useful on all devices.
Accessibility Comments
AppleVis Editor Note: this app was submitted before Usability Ratings were introduced, so one has been chosen on the basis of the accessibility comments made by the original poster. If you have used this app, please post a comment to let us know if you agree with the Rating.
Original Comments: This app is very accessible. A nice feature is that the buttons to switch between Magnetic North and True North for the regular compass are available at the bottom of the compass screen (and do not require double tapping an Info button to change the preference setting, as on the iPhone compass app). Furthermore, Magnetic North bearings are prefaced with an "M" and True North bearings are prefaced with a "T", when announced by VoiceOver. Note that the button to toggle between regular compass and Sun compass settings at the bottom right corner (on the iPhone and iPad 3G+WiFi) is always announced as "Compass Item Off, button". Latitude and longitude are also reported on the compass screen. The Sun compass screen has both a "Sun Orientation" button and a "North Orientation" button at the bottom of the screen. VoiceOver users will not use the "North Orientation" button, which simply reports "0 degrees N" as the bearing and sets this to the direction for the top of the compass. This is meant to allow sighted users to align the graphic for the Sun on the compass dial of the app with the direction of the Sun, so that the top of the iPhone screen is pointed north.